Thanks to receiving from her oldest son what she calls “the best gift ever,” Tashawn D. Jones, 41, is enjoying an especially bright holiday season.

Just a few months ago, her prospects for celebrating Christmas were dim. Her liver was failing and her doctors told her she needed a transplant.

That’s when her son, Au’Qwon M. Turner, stepped up and gave her part of his liver after tests showed he fit the profile of an ideal donor.

A health care worker himself, the slender, soft-spoken 21-year-old called the donation a no-brainer.

“Honestly, it was my mother,” said Mr. Turner, who provides in-home personal care for patients and also works at the McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center in South Side.

“If I could help her out in her sickness, I definitely wanted to do it.”

For Ms. Jones, a former employee at VCU Medical Center where she had the life-saving transplant operation in late September, her son’s generosity has given her a new lease on life.

Her liver failure left her disabled and unable to work for more than two years as her health declined. She and her youngest son, a freshman at Highland Springs High School, live with her mother, Angela Jones.

Though still in recovery, the Richmond native said the operation is allowing her to focus on fulfilling her ambition to open her own catering business.

“I love cooking, and I used to do that on the side,” she said.

For Mr. Turner, the donation meant a seven-day hospital stay and two months of recovery, including a month’s bed rest.

“I just started back to work” two weeks ago, said Mr. Turner, adding that at this point, “I feel great.”

For Ms. Jones, the operation’s aftermath has been more complicated despite its success. She said she spent 35 days in the Downtown hospital and survived life-threatening pneumonia and blood clots before her release.

Along with taking medicine daily to prevent rejection of her new organ, she also had to wear a colostomy bag for the first two weeks.

Because of the extended hospital stay, “I had to learn to walk again and build up my strength” with help from a visiting physical therapist, she said.

Still, Ms. Jones can say that what she has gone through since the operation is better than what she endured when she needed a liver. She said the symptoms began nearly six years ago. She said she would experience sudden sweating and chills.

“I had a lot of pain in my back and stomach,” she said, and a few years later, the whites of her eyes began turning yellow. For the first few years, she said her treating physicians could not pinpoint the problem. She took a variety of medicines, but she said nothing seemed to work.

After being transferred to VCU Health more than two years ago, she said physicians diagnosed the problem and initially used medication.

In June, after everything else had failed, her name was added to the transplant list. Two months later in August, a liver became available, but when she went for the scheduled operation, there was disappointment. She said she was told the liver proved unusable.

That’s when her son, who was celebrating his 21st birthday at the time, got involved.

“There are really no words to express what I am feel- ing,” said Ms. Jones, whose bond with her son has only been strengthened.

“When you give birth to someone, you don’t think that one day that child might save your life,” she said. “But that is what happened.

“What more could one ask for.”